**Core Concept:** The _intent to destroy_, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. **Protected Groups:** The definition applies to national, ethnical, racial, or religious groups. Political groups are generally excluded from the legal definition.  The key element is **specific intent (dolus specialis)**. It's not enough for mass killing to occur; it must be proven that the perpetrator intended to destroy a protected group. The definition is legally precise and comes from the 1948 Genocide Convention. **Subcategories of Acts Constituting Genocide:** The following acts, committed with the intent to destroy a protected group, constitute genocide: - **Killing members of the group:** e.g., systematic executions. - **Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group:** e.g., torture, sexual violence, trauma intended to destroy the group's vitality. - **Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part:** e.g., imposing a famine, creating conditions that lead to mass death from disease or exposure. - **Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group:** e.g., forced sterilization, systematic rape with the intent to impregnate or destroy cultural lineage. - **Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group:** e.g., the systematic removal of children to be raised by another group, severing their cultural and familial ties. **Examples:** The Holocaust (1945), the Rwandan Genocide (1994), the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917), the Srebrenica Massacre (1995), the Gaza Genocide (2023-ongoing). Source: Rome Statute, Article 6; Genocide Convention, Article II